I can’t say I remember ever seeing such an accessory except on police vehicles.
Same here, or on retired/surplus police vehicles.
I’m guessing that @OttoDaFe is referring to something like this?
Very common back in the day, I understand. Departing passengers and their friends/relatives would have bon voyage parties aboard ship. It was fine as long as the friends heeded the All Ashore announcement.
That’s pretty much it (and the light may have been mounted on the ‘A’ pillar instead of the door — as I said, this was when I was quite young so my memory is less than perfect). It was aimed by a handle on the inside, and the object of the game was indeed to follow the ball around the screen.
You can still get something similar, but why the average driver would want one is a mystery to me.
61 here. Malls were vibrant places where one could get a pretzel at Hot Sam, a drink from Orange Julius, or just raid the free sample bowls at Hickory Farms. Every mall seemed to have impressive fountains and sculptures in them. Back in the early-mid 70s malls hadn’t quite caught on yet as places where teens hung out - my impression is that was more during the 1980s and 90s.
Oh my god, we had one of those. One of the records was Santa Claus as I recall.
Another one which I’ve realized: because it was decades before cell phones, you didn’t necessarily always know where someone was, and you couldn’t necessarily reach someone on the phone right away.
It was very common for the moms in the neighborhood to have to call each other on the phone: “is my kid over there?” And, similarly, if you came home, and mom wasn’t there, if she hadn’t left a note, you might call the neighbors to see if she was there.
And, even answering machines (and, later, voicemail) weren’t particularly common when I was a kid in the '70s, so if you needed to call someone, and no one answered (or you got a busy signal), you’d simply have to call back later on.
I forgot to mention the Search Engine of our time, the Dewey Decimal System. A large file of small paper cards in a library. You looked for the general subject, narrow it down, and if you were looking for a particular book it may tell you where to find it, sort of, if the cards were filed correctly, if the books were put back on the shelf correctly, you could go down that row, to that section, and find that the book you needed or wanted was missing and either misfiled or checked out.
Research for term papers and such were problematic.
How To Use the Dewey Decimal System | Monroe County Public Library, Indiana - mcpl.info
I had parents (two) and siblings (three) when I was a kid.
Candy bars were a lot cheaper (and bigger!), and you could still buy penny candy at some stores.
I was 24 or 25 before I ever saw a mall that was open on Sundays.
A church key was needed to open beer and pop cans.
I’m 71.
I still say my favourite sections of the library are the SF, the mysteries, and the 940s (with occasional visits to the 360s and 500s).
The items that took so long were sea monkeys, a Batman stamp pad kit ordered from the back of a cereal box, and a camera from saving up Bazooka gum wrappers!
On the flip side, I suspect much of the cars-and-malls talk in this thread will feel the same way to those who grew up in New York.
No matter how much you fiddled with the rabbit ears.
6:00 Eastern, 5:00 Central, when I was a kid. (A lot of shows did that, so one broadcast would serve both time zones.) And 6:00 was when TV Guide switched from its daytime to its evening listings, which is why I still think of 6:00 as when evening starts.
Does TV Guide still exist?
Oh, you could get a crystal-clear picture as long as you were HOLDING the antenna, just never after you let go.
Isn’t that why people used to have kids? You needed somebody to change the channel and adjust the reception.
Indiana was weird when I was a kid because it didn’t do daylight saving time. Our time didn’t change, but the TV schedule did. Therefore half of the year there was an hour between the end of the evening news and regular prime time shows. This hour got filled with some weird stuff. I remember a country show called the Wilburn Brothers and a game show called the Liar’s Club. Perhaps other Hoosiers remember some other filler shows.
OP here: I’d enjoy reading about any memories you’d care to share. I know I’m not alone in that regard.
…
The more I think about it, there are lots of sports changes. When I was a kid, Major League Baseball players only appeared in Florida or Arizona during spring training. There were three divisions in each football conference, and the Atlanta Falcons were somehow in the NFC West. There was no NHL hockey in the American south, but there was baseball in Montreal. The only professional fighting in America was boxing. Tennis rackets were made of wood (well, when I was really young they still were).
- When I was growing restaurants didn’t have smoking sections because just about everyone smoked. I don’t know about airplanes, but the trolleys and buses did ban smoking. When I got home from school I threw my schoolbag in the door and went out to play in the street till dark (or 6 when we had supper). We didn’t have a car until I was a senior in HS. We got our first TV (B&W, 10”) when I was 13, with my Bar Mitzvah geld. By the time I was 10, I was taking a trolley to the downtown. Seatbelts didn’t exist. My father and I were driven to the Jersey shore (from Philly) by my uncle in a rumble seat. I saw my first computer around 1956 and it occupied the entire basement of a classroom building at Penn. It included a room that contained a bank of 2000 capacitors each 1/2 microfarad.
no wrestling? I’m 78 and I remember seeing it on TV
Long thread, don’t know if anyone mentioned prizes in cereal boxes.
and cracker jack